Mergers & Acquisitions,
researched in depth.
The University of Reading’s research group for mergers and acquisitions. Monthly publications, case competitions, and senior-speaker events.
The largest acquisition of a venture-backed company ever. SpaceX buys the developer of Cursor in an all-stock deal at ~15x ARR, days after its record $85.7B IPO, folding it into xAI for compute, code data, and engineering talent.
Fox acquires the streaming platform used by its viewers. ~$22B EV at a 27% premium, funded by a $12B Morgan Stanley bridge, blending premium live content with the streaming layer.
All-cash at $73 per share, a 24% premium. Merck buys a differentiated life-science tools platform, looking past the cyclical funding slowdown.
$124 per share, a 40% premium. GSK rebuilds its oncology engine ahead of the patent cliff, with a net investment of ~$9.4B after Nuvalent's cash.
A majority buyout for 51%, valuing the business at €8.5-9.0B including debt. Carves an engineering platform out of Volkswagen to stand alone in marine power and decarbonisation.
~$320M all-cash for 100% of an Indian smart-metering platform. An operating annuity on the country's power grid at ~4.9x trailing revenue.
Third-place pitch. Identity, authentication and open banking.
The largest acquisition of a venture-backed company ever. SpaceX buys the developer of Cursor in an all-stock deal at ~15x ARR, days after its record $85.7B IPO, folding it into xAI for compute, code data, and engineering talent.
Fox acquires the streaming platform used by its viewers. ~$22B EV at a 27% premium, funded by a $12B Morgan Stanley bridge, blending premium live content with the streaming layer.
All-cash at $73 per share, a 24% premium. Merck buys a differentiated life-science tools platform, looking past the cyclical funding slowdown.
$124 per share, a 40% premium. GSK rebuilds its oncology engine ahead of the patent cliff, with a net investment of ~$9.4B after Nuvalent's cash.
A majority buyout for 51%, valuing the business at €8.5-9.0B including debt. Carves an engineering platform out of Volkswagen to stand alone in marine power and decarbonisation.
~$320M all-cash for 100% of an Indian smart-metering platform. An operating annuity on the country's power grid at ~4.9x trailing revenue.
Third-place pitch. Identity, authentication and open banking.
A research group focused on mergers and acquisitions.
Reading · Henley Business School · Est. April 2025
Founded in April 2025 to give Reading students a proper way into mergers and acquisitions. We run a monthly publication, enter national and European case competitions, and host fireside chats with senior people from investment banking, private equity, and venture capital.
Members pick up sector knowledge, learn to model transactions end to end, and get to present their own work back to practitioners, to competition judges, and to the rest of the Group.
Every piece is reviewed and edited before it goes out. The coverage runs from day-to-day deal monitoring and sector briefings right through to full transaction analyses: the strategic rationale, the synergies model, and the deal structure.
Our pitch on Mastercard’s acquisition of OneSpan Inc.
Five members of the research team built a full synergies model. That covered revenue uplift across identity, authentication and open banking, plus base, upside and downside cases on cost take-out. The team then presented the work to judges from Nomura, PJT Partners, Neuberger Berman and BGF.
The Group placed third of 120+ teams, in a finals field drawn from Oxford, LSE, UCL and Católica Lisbon. The underlying work, from the synergies model to the strategic rationale and the transaction structure, is documented in both the March 2026 newsletter and the full pitch deck below.
- Giacomo VolpeProject Lead
- Adam QureshiAnalyst
- Safeer HussainAnalyst
- Jonathan BelloAnalyst
- Ameya BhateAnalyst
Warwick Economics Summit
A Group delegation attended corporate seminars and senior-figure panels at WES 2026.
More from 2025/26Our monthly newsletter.
October Briefing
Our start-of-year report for 2026/27. A look back at the first year and what comes next: the newsletter returns at the end of October, more competition entries, and a new series of workshops on CVs, LinkedIn and financial modelling.
June Newsletter
Five deals: Fox's ~$22B acquisition of Roku, Merck KGaA / Bio-Techne at $11.3B, GSK's $10.6B run at Nuvalent, Bain Capital carving Everllence out of Volkswagen, and Adani / IntelliSmart on India's power grid. Plus Big Pharma's patent cliff, the SpaceX IPO, and the President's Note.
Special reports and pitch decks.
Research published outside the monthly newsletter. Pitch decks from case competitions and standalone special reports.
PDFSpecial EditionJul · 2026SpaceX One Month On
By Safeer Hussain and JP Ornellas Filho
A summer special edition. On 12 June, SpaceX raised $85.7B in the largest IPO in history; four days later it agreed to buy Anysphere, the developer of Cursor, for $60B in stock, the largest acquisition of a venture-backed company ever made. Safeer Hussain takes apart the Anysphere deal; JP Ornellas Filho measures SpaceX's first month of trading against the only listing of comparable size, Saudi Aramco's in 2019.
Open PDF
PDFSpecial ReportApr · 2026Somnigroup / Leggett & Platt
By Roberto Bodegas and Safeer Hussain
A $2.5B all-stock acquisition that completes the full bedding value chain. Twenty pages on the DCF, the deal structure, the $50M synergy case, and the main risk: whether the FTC, which blocked a similar Leggett deal before, clears this one.
Open PDF
Applications are open.
The research team writes the monthly newsletter and every case competition submission. Applications for the 2026/27 team are now open.
Our first year, 2025/26.
The timeline, our programmes, photos, and the 2025/26 committee and research team.
- Of 120+ teams · UK & Europe M&A Finals
- 3rd
- Issues published
- 9
- Events in the first year
- 9+
- LinkedIn impressions on the newsletter
- 16,000+
The team, 2026/27.
JP Ornellas Filho
President, 2025/26
LinkedIn
Adam Qureshi
Head of Research, 2025/26
LinkedIn
Safeer Hussain
Senior Research Associate, 2025/26
LinkedIn
Ptolemy Rudge
LinkedIn
Giacomo VolpeBoard Member
Mikhaail AnawarBoard Member
Dexter ChantBoard Member
Matt MeadBoard Member
Our alumni include every member of the 2025/26 research team.
Meet everyoneWhere our members have gone.
Firms where our members and alumni have gone on to work.
Join the Group.
Anyone at Reading can join through the Students’ Union. For any other questions, get in touch with us directly.
- UniversityUniversity of Reading
- Faculty linkHenley Business School
- SU pagereadingsu.co.uk
- Domainuormanda.com